COBTH Home ---------------- Introduction ---------------- Resouces ---------------- Public Health Champion ---------------- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center ---------------- Boston Medical Center ---------------- Brigham and Women's Hospital ---------------- Cambridge Health Alliance ---------------- Caritas Carney Hospital ---------------- Caritas Saint Elizabeth's Medical Center ---------------- Children's Hospital Boston ---------------- Dana-Farber Cancer-Institute ---------------- Faulkner Hospital ---------------- Lahey Clinic Medical Center ---------------- Massachusetts General Hospital ---------------- Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary ---------------- Tufts Medical Center ---------------- VA Boston Healthcare System ---------------- COBTH Community Benefits Committee ---------------- COBTH Hospital Cancer Rides ---------------- COBTH Domestic Violence Council

Partnerships for Healthy Communities   In 2006, the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals (COBTH) ocumented the impact its member hospitals have on the economy in terms of full time jobs, construction projects, attraction of federal research funding and the role its member hospitals play in anchoring the Commonwealth’s life sciences cluster. While the economic impact and job creation of these academic medical centers is substantial, so too are the contributions to caring for the uninsured by, partnering with community agencies to improve the health of the community and addressing the unmet social and healthcare needs of the communities they serve. Hospitals also work in partnership with the school systems in their communities to expose students to careers in healthcare by providing job mentoring and training programs. From Boston’s very beginning, healthcare was viewed as a right to be provided to all citizens. Paul Revere, the city’s first health commissioner, developed a program whereby Boston residents with financial means could purchase healthcare tokens for the underprivileged at the same time that they purchased tokens for their own families. While greater Boston’s academic medical centers have world-renowned reputations and attract patients from around the globe, their roots are grounded in public service to communities in and around Boston. In 2007, COBTH member hospitals partnered with more than 400 agencies and provided more than $170 million to develop and support innovative programs aimed at serving those in need. These programs are more than just statistics and numbers; they represent neighborhoods, parents, children, recent immigrants, the homeless and those with nowhere to turn. COBTH hospitals work with local public and private agencies to assess the needs of communities and partner to develop, implement, support and manage dozens of community benefit programs that have a real impact on people’s lives. Highlighting support groups, programs for the elderly and immigrants, free clinics and outreach to reduce disparities in healthcare; this report highlights how some of the COBTH hospital community benefit programs have touched the lives of the less fortunate while helping to build healthier communities. The programs described in this report and dozens of others like them are designed to meet well identified and specific community needs that, without hospital support, would likely require public funding or simply go unmet. These programs illustrate the ongoing commitment of COBTH hospitals – as they fulfill their mission of community service every day, going beyond the delivery of quality core health care services to ensure healthier children and families, safer environments, earlier detection of disease and enhanced access to basic health care services.